I was up at 5 this morning, showered, had breakfast, packed up my gear, made a quick call to my Mom and was on the road at 7. I got up to the Canyon around 8:30 and made a quick stop at the general store in Grand Canyon VIllage to pick up a tooth brush and some tooth paste. I still made it to the Hermit trailhead with a few minutes to spare.

The other people were already there and it has turned out to be a small party. Two other people cancelled just before Kim went on her river trip two weeks ago and we are now down to just four: Kim, Steve and his son Ryan from Tucson, and myself. We all had brief introductions at the trailhead, I signed some form releasing the Park Service from liability if I should happen to somehow injure or kill myself, packed up the gear and headed off down the trail. I think we probably started down around 9:30 or so.

We made pretty good time going down the trail. Kim is in great shape and set a pretty quick pace but I managed to keep up with her for the most part, loosing ground only when I would stop to take photos, and then eventually, usually catching up with her a little further down the trail. Steve was nursing an injured ankle from an accident earlier in the week and he and Ryan kept up the rear.

Kim had an incident with some of the herbicide she was packing and noticed that one of the containers was leaking. She noticed this at Santa Maria Spring, about 2½ miles in, when she stopped to replenish her water supply. This was not good and we lost about an hour there while messed around with that stuff. She ended up having to stash some of it and will have to pick it up on the way out.

We had a long rest stop for lunch and I had a couple of the best peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I have ever had. We had another longish rest at the top of the Cathedral Stairs and again at the Tonto Trail junction.

I was wondering how long it would be before I heard my first canyon wren and it happened as soon as we entered Monument Creek. We finally ended up getting into camp around 5 and after hanging out and talking for a while Kim set to work making dinner. We had bean, rice and cheese burritos and they were pretty darned good, She used too much water in the bean/rice mix and they ended up being a little runny bet they were still very tasty. I love burritos.

After dinner we talked a while longer and watched the stars come out before all retiring to our respective sleeping areas. We were serenaded to sleep by the sound of crickets and bull frogs.